Friday, February 22, 2013

Coursera Almost Doubles its Participating Universities

The online educational phenomenon, Coursera, has announced that it has almost doubled its participating universities by adding 29 of them to its fold, including some of the world's major universities. Coursera is the world's largest MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses). It offers courses for free and attracts as many as 40,000 students per course.

MOOCs are seen by many as a possible answer to the growing pressures on the educational system to deliver mass education at a reasonable cost. For a summary of the latest initiatives of Coursera, check out this article.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Mobile Payment Systems for Business

Accepting mobile payments is a lot more feasible now after the advent of new systems that allow card readers to be attached to smartphones and iPads to process sales transactions. There are several such systems out there now. For a summary of their strategic implications, check this article.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Convergence of Social Media, Mobility, SOA and BPM

Oracle Corp released an interesting white paper in January which, while proprietary, provides a good overview of the current use of social media in Business Process management. The paper points out the usefulness of social media as a part of business processes, from the research to the roll-out stage. Incorporating such media as Facebook and Twitter, it says, helps to break down the barriers between the decision makers and others and encourages interaction at each step of the way. The white paper can be obtained at the Oracle Website.

Monday, February 11, 2013

The Obsolete Work/Play Divide

Where does work end and play begin, or vice versa. This is the issue of the modern age of technology, particularly that of mobile technology. Work follows us everywhere. And while we are supposed to be working, we sneak some time on Facebook, and even some games. Certainly the traditional idea of going to the office and devoting that time to work is becoming obsolete - for many it's totally obsolete already. While the idea of being able to work at home started the trend, now the ubiquitous Blackberries and iPhones have cemented it. For an interesting article on this subject, check out this article.

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

The Boundary Free Enterprise

A new movement has emerged out of the increased use of mobile devices, cloud computing and social media. It is is the boundary free enterprise (BFE), which envisages a freeing up of enterprise information resources beyond traditional boundaries - a wide ranging sort of thinking outside the box. Besides embracing the BYOD movement, BFE also includes elements like moving beyond individual cloud solutions, moving beyond organizational boundaries to communities of interest and moving beyond structured transactional data (a big one). For a summary of BFE, click this link.